Oppo N3 smartphone has swiveling, motorized selfie camera

Chinese manufacturer Oppo has announced the successor to last year’s N1 smartphone, with the new handset offering a motorized swiveling camera that’s ideal for selfie-obsessed users. Known as the N3, the handset offers a fingerprint sensor and improved internals.

With the selfie now an established global phenomenon, we’ve seen a number of smartphone manufacturers clamouring to address the trend. Generally, this takes the form of an upgraded front-facing camera, but sometimes companies take things a little further.

The Oppo N3 is one such example. Serving as a successor to last September’s N1 smartphone, the device packs a single, 208-degree swiveling 16 MP shooter with dual LED flash. The big difference here is that the N3’s hinge is motorised, meaning users can flip the camera around by means of either a touchscreen gesture or by using the fingerprint sensor built in to the back of the handset. The device will ship with a Bluetooth remote known as the O-Click that lets users adjust the angle of the lens and acts as a remote trigger.

One other new addition comes in the form of the aforementioned fingerprint sensor, located on the rear of the handset. Like the Touch ID scanner found on recent iPhone handsets, users can unlock the device by simply holding a finger on the sensor (whether the speed and accuracy of N3's sensor is on par with Apple's is another question).

The N3 also offers dual-SIM functionality, with both Micro and Nano slots.

Past its swanky new camera tech, the N3 offers some solid, if not ground-breaking internals. The 5.5-inch display is a little smaller than its predecessor’s, but pushes a solid 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, giving it 403 pixels per inch. There’s a fairly standard 2 GB RAM on board, as well as 32 GB storage with a microSD card slot for expandability. In terms of connectivity, the device boasts 4G LTE, 802.11ac wireless, NFC and Bluetooth 4.0.

The device is powered by a quad core 2.3 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor – the same chip found in the HTC One (M8) and Samsung Galaxy S5. At 192 g (0.4 lbs), the plastic-built device is a little lighter than the N1, and measures 8.9 mm (0.35 in) thick. It has a 3,000 mAh battery, and can reportedly be charged to 75 percent in just 30 minutes.

The Oppo N3 will land in December for US$650 off-contract. For a closer look at the device, check out the video below.